HAMBURG
\nA shooting at a Jehovah\u2019s Witness centre in the German city of Hamburg has left eight people dead, including the suspected gunman, police said on Friday, as the motive for the attack remained unclear.
\nSeveral more people were wounded in the attack late Thursday at the Kingdom Hall building in the port city of Hamburg, where Jehovah\u2019s Witness members were attending a religious service.
\n\u201cEight people were fatally injured, apparently including the suspected perpetrator,\u201d Hamburg police said, adding that several other people were hurt, \u201csome seriously\u201d.
\nGerman media put the number of wounded people at eight.
\nNews weekly Der Spiegel reported that the suspected attacker was a former member of the Jehovah\u2019s Witness community who was not a known extremist.
\nThe magazine, which did not cite its sources, said he had been armed with a handgun.
\nBest-selling newspaper Bild named the suspect as 35-year-old \u201cPhilipp F.\u201d and said he killed himself after police stormed the building.
\nChancellor Olaf Scholz condemned the \u201cbrutal act of violence\u201d and said his thoughts were with the victims and their loved ones.
\n\u2018Filmed the whole thing\u2019
\nThe Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in Germany association said it was \u201cdeeply saddened by the horrific attack on its members\u201d.
\nHamburg police are due to give an update at a press conference around midday and urged people not to speculate about the motive behind the shooting.
\nInterior Minister Nancy Faeser said investigators were \u201cworking flat-out to determine the background\u201d to the attack.
\nScreengrab of a tweet by German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser. \u2014 Twitter\/@NancyFaeser
\nThe first emergency calls were made around 9:15pm (8:15pm GMT) on Thursday after shots rang out at the building in the city\u2019s northern district of Gross Borstel.
\nAn alarm for \u201cextreme danger\u201d in the area was sounded using a catastrophe warning app, but Germany\u2019s Federal Office for Civil Protection lifted it shortly after 3am on Friday.
\nNeighbours in the area recalled hearing multiple shots fired late Thursday. \u201cOur son filmed the whole thing, he could see quite well from the house,\u201d Bernd Mibache, a 66-year-old business owner, told AFP.
\n\u201cOn the video, you can see that someone broke a window, you can hear shots fired and see that someone broke in.\u201d
\n\u2018Something big\u2019
\nPolice have asked witnesses to come forward and upload any pictures or videos they may have to a special website.
\nScreengrab of a tweet by German Hamburg police. \u2014 Twitter\/@PolizeiHamburg
\nAnother resident said police arrived on the scene within \u201cfour or five minutes\u201d.
\n\u201cWe heard shots and we knew something big was happening,\u201d said the woman, who gave only her first name Anetta.
\nShe said she knew the building was used by members of the Jehovah\u2019s Witness community, describing them as \u201cvery peaceful, quiet\u201d.
\nThe three-storey building was still cordoned off on Friday with several officers standing outside, an AFP reporter said.
\nGermany has about 175,000 Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, including 3,800 in Hamburg.
\nThe US Christian movement \u2014 set up in the late 19th century and which preaches non-violence \u2014 is known for door-to-door evangelism.
\nThe first officers to enter the Jehovah\u2019s Witness Kingdom Hall building found several lifeless bodies and seriously wounded people, police said.
\nHit by attacks
\nOfficers heard a shot in the \u201cupper part of the building\u201d before finding a body in the area where it rang out, police said.
\nIn a tweet, Hamburg police said they assumed the body belonged to the perpetrator. The suspect is believed to have acted alone.
\nGermany has been rocked by several attacks in recent years, both by jihadists and far-right extremists.
\nAmong the deadliest committed by Islamist extremists was a truck rampage at a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016 that killed 12 people.
\nThe Tunisian attacker, a failed asylum seeker, was a supporter of the militant Islamic State group.
\nGermany has also been hit by a string of far-right assaults, sparking accusations that the government was not doing enough to stamp out neo-Nazi violence.
\nIn February 2020, a far-right extremist shot dead 10 people and wounded five others in the central German city of Hanau.
\nIn 2019, two people were killed after a neo-Nazi tried to storm a synagogue in Halle on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
HAMBURG A shooting at a Jehovah\u2019s Witness centre in the German city of Hamburg has left eight people dead, including the suspected gunman, police said on Friday, as the motive for the attack remained unclear. Several more people were wounded in the attack late Thursday at the Kingdom Hall building in the port city of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318774,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-318750","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n